These cows greeted me as I walked across a field in Kirklington. When I was safely over the stile and into the next field, I took a group portrait.
Better with …
… or without Bessie No-Mates?
Category: North Yorkshire
A Window into the Past
I’m back volunteering at Fountains Abbey, and every time I’m there, I’ll spend time in the ruined Abbey itself. I’ll gaze up at the voids which were once windows. Any stone tracery has long disappeared, revealing views of the sky and trees beyond. And I wonder what the monks saw, during their long hours of worship – eight sessions a day, the first at 2.00 a.m., when the night was charcoal-black and only smoky tallow candles lit the space? The ascetic Cistercians had no statuary in their churches, little stained glass, so the monks probably glimpsed a barely-to-be-discerned landscape beyond, through water-greenish, slightly uneven glass.
In her challenge this week, Jude has invited us to compare the same scene in colour, and in black and white. I thought it would be interesting to do this in a building in which colour plays little part. Surely there would be little difference? Well, apparently there is. I find the black and white version a little too austere for my tastes. What do you think?
And here’s a view of the Abbey with Huby’s Tower, which was completed a mere 13 years before Henry VIII brought the Fountains Abbey community to an end in 1539 during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. I’ve tried to show it more as it might have looked then, set in a wilder landscape than the manicured parkland we see today. And when it came to the monochrome version – well, there’s black and white, and black and white. Again, there are choices here ….
A Bleak Walk is Just Perfect
I love bleak. Typically rolling English countryside is lovely. And you can’t beat a verdant Daleside vista, criss-crossed with dry stone walls dividing its pastureland, its river along the valley floor edged with trees. But here in Yorkshire, every now and then, I have to have my fix of bleak.
And one way to do this is to go over to Angram and Scar House reservoirs, both constructed in Nidderdale during the inter-war years last century, to provide water for the citizens of Bradford. Here are slopes, sculpted by long-gone streams and the often savage weather. These hillsides are covered in thin, tussocky grass – and not much else. Few trees. Few buildings – the odd hunting lodge or barn. But there are sheep, and birdlife too. One of our memories of walking here was once seeing a small meadow pipit struggling to feed ‘her’ baby, a cuckoo fledgling three times her size.
My friend Sandra and I went there this week. The day was perfect. Not too hot and not too cold. Briskly breezy. And as we arrived , the reservoir was as blue as we’ve ever seen it, almost cobalt in its intensity. We planned to walk our way round both reservoirs.
Which way though? Clockwise? Anti-clockwise? Sandra counselled clockwise, and Sandra won. That way, we’d get a slightly boring bit of track over and done with. We’d get the wind-in-our-faces over and done with. And most importantly, we’d get the squishier, less managed paths of Angram Reservoir over and done with.
It’s rained a lot lately, so walking round Angram involves some wet pathways. Not muddy, just paddleable. Juncus grass lining the route offered the odd springboard to drier grassy ground. But with water to right of us, bald barren hillside to left of us , the route is easy to see. And each reservoir terminates in a stout dam, each worthy of walk in its own right, and in Angram’s case, with water tumbling to its sister reservoir below.
Scar House Dam.
Angram Dam
Finally we left our wet pathways behind, and joined the springier drier turf pathways of Scar House Reservoir where sheep kept us company.
But even though we knew from the car park that we weren’t alone, we felt that this particular expanse of hillside, sky and water was ours and only ours for the six and a half mile walk in the middle of nowhere.
The Tale of Little Bad Hen
Once upon a time there were five little hens. They lived in a little wooden hut in a wood. A nice family of humans had adopted them, made meals and cleaned for them. Every time the family cleaned the hut, they made sure there was a fresh copy of the Financial Times on the floor for the hens to read while they were resting at home.
Sometimes, the family went on holiday, and then they asked their neighbours Margaret and Malcolm to take over housekeeping duties. Every night at 8 o’clock, these servants-next-door popped round, made sure the hens were in bed, and shut the hut door firmly.
One night one of the hens, Little Bad Hen, decided not to go home. She was having such fun in the woods, grubbing for windfalls and worms: and besides, it was still light. Nobody had told her that Mr. Fox lived nearby, and had hungry cubs to feed. Luckily for her, nobody had told Mr. Fox that Little Bad Hen was out and about. She got away with it, and came scuttling back as soon as one of the servants-next-door appeared to serve breakfast the following morning.
Little Bad Hen kept this up for four whole nights, clucking smugly to herself as she heard the servants-next-door scurrying about the woods, peering under logs and into hidey-holes searching for her. On the fifth evening, it rained. Little Bad Hen looked up at the sky. She considered the secret-but-chilly and damp shelter that she’d found, under little Felix’s toy wheelbarrow. Perhaps that wooden hut, where she could cuddle up to her friends and sisters was a better idea after all. She might even think about laying those servants-next-door an egg.
Live Theatre: the Handlebards are Here!
I’m a bit of a Handlebards groupie. Handlebards? Yes, the always effervescently inventive troupe (one male combo of four actors, one female combo of four actors) who cycle the country carrying all they need with them to one-night-only venues, in the grounds of stately homes, museums, city parks to present their season’s Shakespeare play in the open air, come rain, come shine.
I’ve been to five productions now, two male, two female, and one … well, we’ll come to that in a minute.
One night was so wet that players and audience alike took refuge in a castle keep. One evening was bright and sunny, as was another, if a little windy. Last year was fine until after the interval. Then the heavens opened. We were well-provided with rain gear but got utterly soaked anyway. The players, their hair plastered to their scalps and water streaming down their faces, their clothes sodden, dripping and rendered translucent by the unremitting downpour played on. What a team! We admired their grit, and retired home to peel off every item of sodden clothing (and that included underclothes) and take a hot shower. The actors camped out on a hard floor, got up the following morning and cycled to their next venue.
Covid 19 put a stop to this year’s plans. No male tour. No female tour. The actors didn’t sit around twiddling their thumbs though. The London-based ones set about organising deliveries of essentials to the vulnerable and shielded. Which was wonderful, but not acting.
Three of the Handlebards share a house: They’re their very own Social Bubble. So during the days of Lockdown they hatched a plot to tour a play during August and September, just the three of them: two men, one woman. They chose Romeo and Juliet. No problem. Aside from Romeo and Juliet themselves, they only have to play Mercutio, Benvolio, Capulet, Tybalt, Juliet’s nurse and her mother, Friar Laurence …
These kinds of difficulty never thwart the Handlebards. Hats and wigs temporarily stand in for characters whose actor is currently multi-tasking. Props are minimal. Bicycle pumps for weapons; an aerosol; a hand-painted sun and moon; a repurposed squash-up play tunnel becomes Juliet’s balcony; a couple of military jackets; a length of hessian to stand in for monkish robes; gauzy stuff for Juliet; lengths of red ribbon for blood and guts and they’re pretty much sorted.
Boy meets girl. Romeo and Juliet.
Juliet’s giddy and in love.
She disappears under her own balcony.
Here’s Friar Laurence.
Juliet’s nurse has just found Juliet … dead.
The actors change roles, sometimes almost mid sentence. A Liverpudlian becomes a Scot who becomes someone who has twubble with his ‘r’s. Romeo and Juliet themselves are played by a man and a woman respectively, but who knew that Juliet’s nurse sports a dapper beard, or her mother blue knee-socks?
We went along to Thursday evening’s performance. It was all tremendously rip-roaring fun, played against the backdrop of the lovely Jacobean Kiplin Hall. We took chairs, a picnic, and lots of warm clothes, because it was chilly. As ever, laughter and sheer delight kept us entirely in the moment, so we barely noticed that it started to drizzle, not long before the end. Thank you Handlebards. Live theatre is back.
A Greener Shade of Green …
Coverdale in early summer.
Nidderdale from Middlesmoor.
Woodland on the Cleveland Way
An early morning on the Ripon Rowel walk.
Drumlins near Gargrave, Airedale.
Near Coniston, Wharfedale.
… or a bluer shade of blue …
… or a whiter shade of pale …
… or simply hoping to look exactly like the surrounding grasses.
That’s Jude’s Photo Challenge this week:
This week's assignment - Find a monochromatic scene consisting of varying shades of a single colour.
All of these shots were taken under a Yorkshire sun.
A Day at the Seaside, British Style …
… involves …
Oh, and most importantly, fish and chips.
Staithes, North Yorkshire August 2020.
A Pleasing Perspective on Plants by a Pond
A Solid Perspective on the Past
This really is a challenge. Photos demonstrating 3D. Showing the heft, the mass, the solidity of the main subject: putting it in the perspective of its surroundings.
I took myself to Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal. Here is an ancient Cistercian foundation, in ruins since the days when Henry VIII called for the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Here are Georgian water gardens, developed by John and William Aislabie in the 18th century. And here I found my subjects.
Much of what you find in the gardens is more playful. This balustrade overlooking the lake, shows icicles. ‘It’s summer now’, is the message. ‘Enjoy yourselves. Winter will be along soon enough.’
This young pheasant has found the Banqueting House. Outside is a lawn cut into the shape of a coffin. The message is similar. ‘Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die’*
And later, explore the woodlands of the High Ride and its ancient trees. Their roots are pretty solid.
* from the Books of Ecclesiastes and Isaiah in the Bible.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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